Category: people

Kamila Shamsie: “I am deeply critical of American writers for their total failure to engage with the American empire. It’s a completely shocking failure.”

“When Stephen Jay Carlton was hired on July 1, 2009, at an annual salary of $75,000 plus full medical benefits, the balance sheet for the Symphony at the fiscal year ending June 2009 showed about $500,000 in endowment funds with close to $10,000 in the checking account. On Sept. 20, 2013, when the alleged fraud began to unravel, there was $1,400 in endowment funds and $0 in the checking account.”

“She was best known for the fictional diaries of Adrian Mole, who began confiding his deepest desires and ambitions in the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole 13 3/4 in 1982. His teenage years were recounted in the Growing Pains of Adrian Mole and further novels dealt with married life and middle age.”

An author and poet in her own right, she was “a central figure in a family of prominent American writers whose most notable member was her husband, John, with whom she had a relationship as complex as those he wrote about.”

“A faded fragment of papyrus known as the ‘Gospel of Jesus’s Wife,’ which caused an uproar when unveiled by a Harvard Divinity School historian in 2012, has been tested by scientists who conclude in a journal published on Thursday that the ink and papyrus are very likely ancient, and not a modern forgery.”

“This is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done,” says Richard Serra, talking about his latest work. “It’s a piece that I’d really like to be seen, and I don’t know if it will.”

The 87-year-old Nobel laureate “returned to his Mexico City home on Tuesday after a week-long hospitalization for pneumonia, but officials said he remains in ‘delicate’ condition.”

“We put stuff in there that was not really that good, but fortunately there were a couple of gleaming things that everyone remembers while they’ve forgotten the dross. … People forgive you the things that don’t work”

“Every one of us who works in this field becomes part of this fabric we call history. You want to know how you connect with the past but also how you connect with the future. Therefore it becomes more and more important to work with young people.”

“In its coverage of Mickey Rooney, there’s one thing the media have generally danced past, and it happens to be the role that has cast the longest shadow out of a career of thousands: His performance as Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi in the classic 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”